Laughter is a force for social cohesion, it's said to be contagious, and it helps us feel like we belong in a group. So much so that we'll pretend to go along with an inside joke in a group we have no shared experience with, according to behavioral researcher Michael Norton.
Norton told Boston Public Radio on Tuesday his research involved having groups of people watch a funny video independently, then interact with each other. But one unlucky soul watched a different video. The result? The person who watched the different video would laugh along as if they were in on the experience.
"They look like they're laughing, they look like they're a part of the group, but they're having a really different experience," said Norton. "They basically feel not only excluded but also that it was on purpose, it's almost as though we think when we're there, that, 'These people aren't thinking about me at all so they actually dont like me.'"
Think you'd be the type of person to stop and explain that you have no idea what's going on, and risk social alienation? Think again.
"It's incredibly rare, it's so rare that we don't know who does it," he said. "It's almost like record scratch if you stop the flow and say everybody stop laughing and please explain to me in detail why you're all laughing."
Michael Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He has studied human behavior in domains such as love and inequality, time and money, and happiness and grief. He is the co-author – with Elizabeth Dunn – of the book, Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending.
